Anthony Veasna So was a new friend who felt almost immediately like an old one. We called ourselves diasporic neighbours—him from a Khmer American family, me from a Thai American one. We talked about visiting Southeast Asia together. I’d show him Bangkok, glitzy and delicious, where his exuberance would fit right in. Then we’d go to Cambodia and ‘visit some family’ before finding another spot in the region where neither of us had been. I have a husband and son, but, somehow, I was sure the trip would happen.

We met in January 2020 at the Tin House Writers Workshop, in a blustery coastal town in Oregon. I had a bad cold that we later learned was pneumonia. Anthony sat next to me, even though I was a snotty mess. He handed me tissues as we talked with other friends about Asian writers entering the US market, and Sianne Ngai’s work. I didn’t know he was going to be one of the last people outside my family to hug me; soon after we returned to the Bay Area, California declared a lockdown.

At Tin House, Anthony spoke all the time of Alex Torres, his partner, who was home in San Francisco eating potato chips, he said, because Alex couldn’t cook. Anthony made him breakfast every day of their relationship, which began when they were undergraduates at Stanford. There was a moment when Anthony turned to me and said with this solemn face: ‘You can call me Ant. Ant and Al. That’s us.’ I knew I had been invited into the circle. I have a small circle too.

• Tags: Anthony Veasna So, Cambodia, Issue 22, Sunisa Manning